On March 31st, the Zigen Fund held a fundraising party for its 30th anniversary in Flushing, NY. Guests from Raybin Wong Foundation, Yulin Foundation, and other organizations that have been supporting Zigen for years, as well as university professors, engineers, and Chinese businessmen all came to celebrate.

The event began with the film Zigen’s girls, 30 years dreams of building beautiful schools and villages. Pat Yang, founder of Zigen, reviewed the achievements of Zigen in its 30 years of existence. In 1988, a group of international students from Hong Kong and Taiwan established Zigen Fund in New York. They donated 1% of their wages and went to the remote areas in Guizhou of China, to provide basic education for children, especially girls. They helped rural villages to generate income, develop basic medical and health services, and protect the environment and local culture. These earliest funded girls have now grown into the main force of cultural and ambitious rural development. The Zigen Fund hopes to continue to help them build their hometown.

The film The Story of Da Sen Dian showed how Zigen supported the rural green eco villages and the sharing of practical experience. It has aroused everyone’s attention to rural education for sustainable development.

The success of this fundraising party is because of everyone‘s support. Zigen thank you for your contribution to the promotion of rural education in China. We hope that more people will participate in promoting the education and development of China’s impoverished villages so that our future will be more peaceful and sustainable. (Written by Wenxin Zhang. Translated by Xiaoxi Tong)

Prof. Judy Manton and Prof. Cynthia Wiseman introduced Zigen’s 15 years training program for Chinese rural English teachers. The English teacher training program (ETTP) is one of Zigen’s featured program. It is designed to improve the English proficiency of rural teachers. Since 2004, they have conducted summer training for rural English teachers in Guizhou, Shanxi, and Hebei provinces.